Contents

Worried about the vulnerability of workstations used by several thousand IBM system administrators who had access to clients’ production systems, about four years ago the company took away their Windows computers and put them all on Linux PCs.

Those who needed Windows could run it in a KVN virtual environment. In addition, the admins were told no personal browsing or email could be done on the Linux platform.

Pluribus joins such vendors as Cumulus, Midokura and Big Switch Networks in porting their software to Dell’s “brite-box” hardware.
Dell is adding Pluribus Networks’ new Linux-based network operating system to the growing list of third-party software that can run on its portfolio of open network switches.

Desktop

The Cirrus7 Nimbini mini PC is probably one of the most beautiful and powerful mini-PCs available right now that ship with Ubuntu. The German company that builds them has shown us how that amazing aluminium case looks on the inside.

Eurocom makes some of the beefiest, most bad ass notebooks around, and I wouldn’t blame you if you thought it was impossible for the company to produce something a bit more modest. Well, it can, and today we see an example of that with the M4 ultraportable notebook, one that happens to support Linux.

Eurocom, one of the oldest hardware company specialized in completely upgradable notebooks, as well as high-performance mobile servers and workstations, announced the immediate availability of the EUROCOM M4 Ultraportable laptop powered by Ubuntu Linux.

Server

Canonical, through Carsten Duch, reports that the teuto.net German IT company, which specializes in offering various Linux-based hosting and cloud services, has announced that it has built a new service called teutoStack Public Cloud.

Kernel Space

In 1997, I was part of a team that was looking at new technologies that we might want to incorporate into our datacenter. One of the technologies I chose to look at was Linux. So, I loaded up Red Hat 3.0.3 (IIRC) and started learning. The more I studied it, the more I realized that Linux could replace many of the custom operating systems (OS) that we used in our products, in addition to its usefulness in the datacenter.

Allwinner Technology is the Chinese company producing a range of low-end SoCs for Android tablets and other devices. Allwinner hardware is popular with many in the open-source community due to their SoCs appearing in lower-cost hardware and the thriving Linux-SunXi community. Unfortunately, Allwinner as a company is still “learning” to be open-source friendly and to not violate the GPL and other licenses.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced that Allwinner Technology, Datto, LINBIT, and Nutanix are joining the organization.

Bryce Harrington released Wayland 1.8.1 today as a fix that just addresses problems with the Wayland 1.8.0 distribution tarball. Some files in the Wayland 1.8.0 package were marked read-only and today’s 1.8.1 update just fixes that issue.

Benchmarks

Ubuntu 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04, 14.10, and 15.04 were tested on this laptop using clean installs each time and the Linux OS each time was left in its default configuration/state. The final run was done on Ubuntu 15.04 when upgrading to the Linux 4.1 development kernel and Mesa 10.7-dev Git.

Last month, we reported on the release of the Avidemux 2.6.9 open-source and cross-platform video editor for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems, but today we see the release of Avidemux 2.6.10.

After having announced the release of the ownCloud 8.0.4 self-hosting cloud server software, ownCloud Inc. has had the pleasure of informing its users about the immediate availability for download of ownCloud Client 1.8.2.

Google developers have been quick to remedy a regression in Google Chrome that messed up with the way the zoom function worked. Only the Linux platform received this update, and it seems that none of the other supported OS had this problem.

Ansible is one of the most popular automation and configuration management tool available to anybody with computer systems to manage and automate. In this article, you’ll learn the simple task of installing it on CentOS 7.

Valve has just launched a new Steam Monster Summer Sale, and it’s full of Linux games. Given the fact that one in five games on Steam has Linux support, it’s not really a surprise that this is probably the best Steam Summer Sale for Linux users until now.

Team Fortress 2, an online team multiplayer game developed by Valve, has been updated once more by its developer. Furthermore, a separate summer sale is also running as we speak, specifically for this game.

This week I started Linux testing of the AMD A10-7870K “Godavari” APU with Radeon R7 Graphics. I delivered some preview graphics numbers for this high-end APU yesterday, but for those wanting tests from Steam Linux games, here’s some numbers covering that aspect of Linux gaming.

Tribute Games’ unique Breakout-style JRPG Wizorb has received the flibit-treatment and is now available to us on Steam for the first time. The MonoGame port available through a Humble Widget on the Wizorb website has also been replaced with the FNA re-port.

The new week-long Humble Indie Bundle contains a good mix of previously bundled Linux games. If you missed out on these modern indie classics in the past, this is a good chance to stock up your game library while supporting the developers and charity. This bundle supports Watsi, which funds life-saving medical care around the world, and the Child’s Play Charity, which aims to bring some joy into the lives of children in hospitals.

We’ve known the Source 2 version of Dota 2 was imminent and now Valve has confirmed that by the end of next week they’ll be rolling out the open beta for this update being referred to as Dota 2 Reborn.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

KDE Frameworks are 60 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. For an introduction see the Frameworks 5.0 release announcement.

Exactly five years I came to Salvador to attend my first KDE event. It was the debut of Akademy-BR and my debut as a community contributor. At the time, I was already using KDE for 3 years but I had not contributed to the community of software that I always liked. It was the perfect time to start!

As mentioned in a recent article related to the core components of the GNOME desktop environment, the last point release of GNOME 3.16 has been released a while ago but the GNOME developers are hard at work publishing maintenance releases for some of the major apps of the acclaimed project.

As reported earlier, the GNOME developers are hard at work these days releasing new maintenance versions for some of the most important core components of the stable GNOME 3.16 desktop environment, despite the fact that the last point release was announced a while ago.

When I first started contributing to OpenStack, it briefly looked like I would need to make some Ubuntu packaging updates in order to get a Nova patch landed. At the Essex design summit a few weeks later, I raged at Monty Taylor how ridiculous it would be to require a Fedora packager to fix Ubuntu packaging in order to contribute a patch. I was making the point that upstream projects should leave packaging to the downstream packaging maintainers. Upstream CI quickly moved away from using packages after that summit, and I’ve heard Monty cite that conversation several times as why upstream should not get into packaging.

[...]

For me, what’s hugely exciting about all of this is the future prospect of the package maintainers for different platforms adopting a “continuous packaging” workflow and working closely with project developers, to the extent that packaging changes could even be coordinated with code changes. With its amazing infrastructure, OpenStack has broken new ground for how open-source projects can operate. This could be yet another breakthrough, this time demonstrating how a project’s infrastructure can be used to enable an entirely new level of collaboration between package maintainers and project developers.

I’m writing about the work that I’ve done so far. I worked on redesigning of “World” module of gnome-clocks. The current application shows the location in square tiles form. To delete any location user has to select the location and then click on the delete button. The below screenshots shows the current gnome-clocks “world” module design.

Reviews

This evening I decided to install Calculate Linux, so I threw in the LiveDVD and rebooted. The installer was interesting, easy to use, but I wonder why it asked which I/O scheduler I wished to use. Okay, I get asking the filesystem choice, but the last I even thought about I/O schedulers I was building a kernel – and I don’t recall when exactly that was but I think it started with a 2.4. I tried to select default (one of the choices that sounded safe) but it kept going back to BFQ. The remaining steps proceeded fine until time to install GRUB. That failed with the error couldn’t find update-grub.new. Hmm. So, next reboot I get dropped to a grub terminal. Yippie.

New Releases

Anke Boersma had the great pleasure of informing us earlier today about the immediate availability for download of the KaOS 2015.06 Linux distribution based on the latest and greatest KDE technologies.

The IPFire development team published details about a new update for their open-source and independent firewall distribution based on the Linux kernel, IPFire 2.17 Core Update 91, urging users to update as soon as possible.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

A few hours ago, OpenMandriva dropped a tweet on their official Twitter account asking users their opinion on the matter of maintaining the i586 (32-bit) builds of the distribution or not, which was discussed a while ago.

Arch Family

The Manjaro developers announced recently that the Blue Systems and Calamares teams are proud to announce the immediate availability of Calamares 1.1 RC1, a distribution-independent installer framework.

Ballnux/SUSE

Most openSUSE users are desktop users and sysadmin. If, as I conclude from the latest oSC15 videos and factory mailing list discussions, sysadmins are the chosen target, It would be great to see SUSE/openSUSE challenging the assumption that, through a continuous delivery process, you cannot release a stable and high quality (for the target) distribution. That stability is only achievable through a waterfall like model. I would choose CoreOS as reference. It is a project that, based on different questions, is providing innovative answers to new challenges.

Fedora

Vince Pooley, the founder of the Chapeau project, had the great pleasure of announcing today, June 13, the immediate availability for download of the final release of the Chapeau 22 Linux operating system.

The last article in our Fedora 22 screenshot tour series is for the Xfce Spin, which is built around the latest Xfce 4.12 desktop environment and offers a lightweight system for low-end machines and computers with old or semi-old hardware components.

The new release brings fixes of the most occurred errors in Fedora 22. Moreover adds SSL support in repository configuration and random sleep dnf-automatic feature. Read more in 1.0.1 release notes on DNF documentation page.

A FAD is a Fedora Activity Day — a planned event where we bring contributors together to hack on specific goals tied to the Fedora mission and our objectives. Last week, we had a big one, the 2015 Release Tools and Infrastructure FAD.

With the release of Fedora 22, it’s about time I published the contributor stats for Fedora 22! We’ll be taking a look at 3 aspects of the efforts of the QA team for Alpha, Beta and Final: Updates Testing, Validation Tests and Bug Reports. These aren’t complete stats for everything QA does, just three facets that are easy to measure.

Every year, Fedora users and developers in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region meet up at the annual FUDCon (Fedora Users & Developers Conference) to learn how to do get more out of Fedora, and plan the future of our OS. This year, the APAC FUDCon is being held in the city of Pune, India from June 26 to June 28 2015, and everyone is invited to attend this free event.

Debian Family

The Linux AIO team was more than happy to announce us today about the immediate availability for download of an updated Linux AIO Debian Live DVD, now based on the recently released Debian GNU/Linux 8.1 (Jessie) operating system.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

Busy day today. The final OTA-4 candidate is almost ready. We built 2 snapshot-images today – first one didn’t include one fix due to a missing package copy, second one with everything ready is now being tested by QA. All in all, once OTA tests are finished, we’ll hand it over to BQ and release. Hopefully the final OTA-4 release should happen on Monday. But thanks to all of that we included another MMS related fix to the whole batch.

Ubuntu, has been expanding its horizons with Ubuntu Mobiles and the recently scrapped Ubuntu for Android, it still remains one of the most preferred Linux Operating System all over the Globe with its easy installation, User Friendly Interface and the ease with which it can be customized. For more information on this wonderful Operating system stay tuned.

Ubuntu developers are preparing to release a new update for the Ubuntu Touch platform, but they are also thinking about the update that will come after this one, and it looks like full shell rotation is finally coming.

After announcing last week that both the next-generation Unity 8 user interface and Mir display server of the Ubuntu Linux operating system received a massive update with numerous new features, Kevin Gunn dropped an email on June 12 informing us about an exciting new update for said technologies.

Spanish smartphone company BQ recently launched its latest smartphone, the Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition, to the European market. The new smartphone is now available for pre-order at the company’s official website and costs only €199.90.

We’ve reported a lot of news related to the launch of the OTA-4 update for Canonical’s Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system, which powers smartphones like BQ Aquaris E4.5 or Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition, in the last couple of weeks.

Linux Mint is a special kind of Linux distribution—one that has gone a very long way to hold true to the form, function, and spirit that has guided Linux for a very long time. While other distributions march into the shiny, touch-friendly world that is the future, Mint remains grounded in what has worked for decades. With just the slightest of tweaks, Mint has gone boldly into that good night while keeping a foot deeply planted in the familiar.

With it’s latest release, 17.1 “Rebecca”, Linux Mint retains all of that which is familiar and beloved by its long time followers and adds enough polish to help attract new users.

Speaking of Mint 17.1, Jack Wallen said to new Mint users, “Linux Mint 17.1 is that it is an ideal platform for any user.” He said that while other distributions run to the latest “shiny, touch-friendly” gizmos, Mint has remained true to its roots. “With just the slightest of tweaks, Mint has gone boldly into that good night while keeping a foot deeply planted in the familiar.” From there Wallen demonstrated why Mint is a good choice for desktop users and concluded, “If you’re looking for a new operating system, one that you can depend on and get up to speed with quickly, you’d be remiss not to give Linux Mint 17.1 “Rebecca” a glance before any other distribution.”

Martin Wimpress, the lead developer of the Ubuntu MATE operating system, has had the great pleasure of announcing earlier today that the highly anticipated MATE 1.10 desktop environment has been officially released.

Logic Supply unveiled three fanless industrial PCs, including two using Intel 4th Gen Core processors and one with a quad- or octa-core Atom “Avoton” SoC.

Logic Supply’s Linux-ready ML600 Series computers represent the next generation in the company’s ML series after last year’s ML400 Series. The systems are available pre-loaded with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit, but are likely to be compatible with most current Linux distributions.

MYIR’s new sandwich-style dev board mixes a Linux-ready, Zynq-based COM with 4GB eMMC with a carrier board that has USB, GbE, HDMI, PMOD, and FMC I/O.

Like MYIR’s Z-Turn Board SBC, the MYC-C7Z010/20 computer-on-module, which plugs into a MYD-C7Z010/20 baseboard to form a sandwich-style SBC, runs Linux on a Xilinx Zynq system-on-chip. You can choose between two COM SKUs, including one with the Zynq-7010 found on the Z-Turn, and another with a Zynq-7020, which has a higher end FPGA with 85K logic cells. All the Zynq SoCs run Linux on dual 667MHz to 866MHz Cortex-A9 cores.

Parrot revealed 13 new Linux-based mini-drones including new jumping and airborne models with headlights, an airborne cargo quadcopter, and a hydrofoil.

Parrot’s 13 new mini-drones expand upon last year’s similarly toy-like Rolling Spider and Jumping Sumo. The products are all selling for 199 Euros ($220) or less in France. By comparison, Parrot’s higher end AR.Drone 2.0 sells for $300, and its more advanced Bebop Drone goes for $500 and up. The new products will go on sale in the U.K. and perhaps globally in early July, according to the Engadget story that alerted us to the announcement.

The Linux Foundation has issued a call for papers for Embedded Linux Conference Europe, which this year joins LinuxCon + CloudOpen in Dublin from Oct. 5-7.

Like last year, the Linux Foundation’s LinuxCon Europe show is being co-located with CloudOpen Europe and Embedded Linux Conference Europe, with a single registration. This year the show moves from Düsseldorf to Dublin where it will run at the Convention Centre Dublin from Oct. 5-7. Registration is open, as well, and if you register before July 11, you can save $300 or more. There’s no keynote list yet, but last year the event featured speakers including Linux creator Linus Torvalds, Jono Bacon (XPRIZE), and Joanna Rutkowska (Invisible Things Lab), among others.

Phones

Tizen

According to industry sources Samsung Electronics is looking to further expand the Tizen ecosystem. The Samsung Z1 was released in India on 14 January and has sold over 500,000 units. Soon after the Z1 was released in Bangladesh and made up 23.4 percent of the smartphone market.

It may not be necessary, but it’s still a very good idea. There’s definitely Android malware out there. While the level of the threat may be exaggerated, it’s really a matter of being better safe than sorry.

The assumption is that the ‘slider phone’ revealed in Barcelona at MWC 2015 will be the device running the operating system championed by Google. There’s no word if BlackBerry would go for the full Google Play enabled version of Android with support for all of Google’s apps, or whether it will use the Android Open Source Project as a base and create its own Android fork (as Nokia did, and Amazon continues to do).

BlackBerry (BB.TO) is considering equipping an upcoming smartphone with Google Inc.’s (GOOGL.O) Android software for the first time, an acknowledgement that its revamped line of devices has failed to win mass appeal, according to four sources familiar with the matter.

The HTC One M7 is one of the best smartphones out there, even though it is a rather outdated flagship that was launched two years ago. Since the HTC One M7 launch, HTC has been busy launching new Desire phones, the One M8 and of course, the One M9 and its various variants. But there are still thousands out there that own the HTC One M7 and are wondering whether it will be getting the Android 5.1 Lollipop update anytime soon. Those of you who were hoping to get the HTC One M7 update to the latest version of Lollipop might be disappointed.

Samsung released the Galaxy S6 just a few months ago to almost universal praise. Sure, it doesn’t have a removable battery or a microSD card slot, but the design, camera, and screen are all fantastic. However, maybe the Galaxy S6’s time on the Android throne is already at an end. The LG G4 has launched with an impressive spec sheet and several features Samsung dropped this year. Let’s see how these devices stack up.

Apple did not trumpet it earlier this week during the keynote address kicking off its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), but the company will release an Android-to-iOS migration app alongside iOS 9 this fall.

A new version of Google’s Slides presentation app on Android includes support for the company’s Chromecast TV dongle, allowing presenters to ditch those old-school clickers and use their phone as a remote.

With each passing day, we get closer and closer to the release of Samsung’s next big Lollipop update. That update is expected to be Android 5.1.1, Google’s newest version of Lollipop. This week we’ve seen several new details emerge and today we take a look at what you need to know right now about the Samsung Android 5.1.1 release.

Taking a look back at seven days of news across the Android world, this week’s Android Circuit includes Samsung’s confirmation of the Galaxy S6 Active, BlackBerry’s potential switch to Android, Samsung’s definition of insanity, Xiaomi’s Mi+ plans, Google’s ‘Which Phone’ tool, the new family-friendly section of the Google Play Store, HMRC choosing Google over Microsoft, and Larry Page’s nomination as CEO of the year.

The Shield Pro, Nvidia’s gaming console and 4K streaming box, is now shipping. If you want to be an early adopter of the nascent Android TV platform, this is one of your only options, and it’s certainly one of the cheapest. Sharp and Sony currently have the only Android TV-powered sets on store shelves, and while you can get it on Google’s $79 Nexus Player set-top box, that device doesn’t support 4K.

One of the issues with last year’s update of Android Lollipop, also known as Android 5.0 or Android L, was that it was very slow to roll out to even some of the newest Android devices. During the fall and holiday season last year, everyone was quick to ask: “where’s my Lollipop Android 5.0 update?” Now it appears that with Android 5.1 getting a slow rollout, everyone is asking for that, specifically for LG smartphones. Here is an Android 5.1 Lollipop update for the LG G4, the LG G3, and the LG G2 along with their respective release dates for carriers like AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile.

Gina Trapani’s worn lots of different hats over the years. She founded Lifehacker and served as its inaugural editor. She hosted two different shows on the TWiT podcast network, including the informative and entertaining All About Android. And she created and continues to develop ThinkUp, a social media analysis service, along with a multiplatform to-do list app and a new service called Makerbase that promises to connect people who make cool things.

BlackBerry is considering equipping an upcoming smartphone with Google’s Android software for the first time, an acknowledgement that its revamped line of devices has failed to win mass appeal, according to four sources familiar with the matter.

The Shield Pro, Nvidia’s gaming console and 4K streaming box, is now shipping. If you want to be an early adopter of the nascent Android TV platform, this is one of your only options, and it’s certainly one of the cheapest. Sharp and Sony currently have the only Android TV-powered sets on store shelves, and while you can get it on Google’s $79 Nexus Player set-top box, that device doesn’t support 4K.

Sellers of Android boxes loaded with software enabling the free viewing of movies, TV shows and live sports have been raided this week by UK authorities. Trading Standards officers, police and representatives from Sky TV carried out raids in several locations, causing other sellers to quickly reconsider the tone of their marketing efforts.

While there are some tests for desktop version of KDE Connect, Android version had no tests at all. Also, I had never realized how UI applications can be tested or how unit tests are going to work if all classes are linked with each other. I had no idea how to isolate a class for unit test.

One of the benefits of Android’s openness is that many of its parts can be replaced by third party apps and services. One of those parts is the homescree and app launcher, the very first piece of software the user meets when using their smartphone. After the lock screen, of course. You might have heard of launchers like Nova, Apex, Go, or even Google’s own Google Now, but here are five more that you won’t usually read about in the news unless they have a major update or release.

For those that want to see some of what’s new in Google’s recently announced Android M software you can see the changes in our M vs Android 5.1 Lollipop walkthrough below. This is a comparison of Android 5.1 Lollipop vs the Android M beta preview on the Nexus 6 and Nexus 5.

There are multiple operating systems powering our mobile devices today. For both indie developers and large companies, there is a critical question that needs to be answered before development begins: what platform should be targeted first? For larger companies, with more resources, development can be done simultaneously for different platforms, while for smaller shops, it is a very critical question, which could determine the success or failure of the business.

Apple announced iOS 9 on Monday, and while watching the keynote, I had just a little bit of déjà vu. Most of iOS 9′s new features seem to be squarely aimed at Apple’s biggest rival in mobile: Android. Specifically, they were about catching up to Android.

At this point, it’s kind of unclear who’s stealing what between Apple and Google. Android has implemented plenty of features over the years that the iPhone has since adopted, but as PhoneArena elucidates in a comparison piece, Android M appears to have taken some inspiration from iOS as well.

Buying an Android phone can be intimidating, what with all the options out there. Google has a new tool that might help you narrow things down a little, and it’s right there on the main Android phone homepage under “Find the Android phone for you.” Just answer some question and the Google machine spits out some suggestions.

Google has quietly launched a new suggestion tool on the Android website at android.com/phones/whichphone. Which Phone, first spotted by XDA, asks you a few simple questions about your smartphone usage and then offers a few Android suggestions that might work for you.

Open source software is not a trend; it is here to stay. Debating the value of open source software (OSS) on technical considerations is a moving target. Determining the costs of implementing and using open source makes for a more stable argument. The initial software may be free, but learning, implementing, improving, connecting to, and operating it is not free. When you acquire OSS you will have more responsibilities than if you acquired closed product software from a vendor.

One question increasingly raised throughout the SDN/NFV community is, “Why are there so many groups associated with NFV/SDN?” While the answer is subject to debate, no one should be surprised that NFV and SDN are far too pervasive for any single organization and/or industry body to control.

ETSI was the birthplace of the NFV concept in 2012, and OPNFV was launched just two years later with many of the same members to help bring NFV from specs to reality using open source methodologies. Marc Cohn, who is an active participant in many open communities including OPNFV, OpenDaylight and the Open Networking Foundation, recently published an article for SDxCentral about how OPNFV and ETSI continue to work in tandem to accelerate NFV adoption.

When it comes to new open source tools that can make a difference, it’s wise to look to some of the tech companies that regularly open source their own in-house platforms and tools. Just witness Netflix, which has open sourced troves of useful cloud utilities. Facebook and Google have release a lot of useful tools as well.

Los Angeles County is home to a burgeoning technology industry. It boasts a roster of high-profile companies including Hulu, Snapchat, and Tinder. As of 2013, it offered more high-tech jobs than other major markets in the country, including Silicon Valley and New York City. Come election time, however, its residents cast their votes by marking inkblots on ballots that resemble Scantron forms.

Events

Linux and FOSS make cameo appearances throughout the TV and film world, and lately we’ve been treated to the GNOME vs. KDE tête-à-tête in the USA Network’s pilot of a show called “Mr. Robot.” This scene piqued my interest enough to watch the pilot, which was a mix of downright scary and mildly interesting portrayals of tech types at various levels in the overt and covert tech-company hierarchy, wrapped in painfully mediocre dialog (why can’t Aaron Sorkin just write everything? Is that too much to ask?). SPOILER ALERT: The subtext of a psychologically wrecked, socially castrated hacker protagonist — the one using GNOME — is grating enough, but this stereotype is far and away eclipsed by the world domination seemingly at the fingertips of the suit using KDE, which he displayed at the end of the pilot. And we though it was Redmond seeking to take over the world when it’s really…KDE?

Right away I ran across Brian Proffitt, whom many of you will remember from his days covering Linux and FOSS for news sites or from the time he spent at Linux Today. These days he’s all but given up journalism for real work, at Red Hat. However, the presentation he’s giving on Sunday here at SELF has a writerly ring to the title: “It’s Metaphors All the Way Down.”

I also had a chance to talk with Deb Nicholson with the Open Invention Network, who’ll be giving a talk on Saturday about software patent litigation. Funny thing, patents were hardly mentioned in our conversation. Mainly we talked about tech corporations under the headings: the good, the bad and the pure evil. If anyone sees Clint Eastwood, tell him I have a movie idea…

Web Browsers

Chrome

Mozilla

I recently decided to stop using Firefox as my main Browser. I’m not alone there. While browser statistics are notoriously difficult to track and hotly debated, all sources seem to point toward a downward trend for Firefox. At LQ, they actually aren’t doing too badly. In 2010 Firefox had a roughly 57% market share and so far this year they’re at 37%. LQ is a highly technical site, however, and the broader numbers don’t look quite so good. Over a similar period, for example, Wikipedia has Firefox dropping from over 30% to just over 15%. At the current rate NetMarketShare is tracking, Firefox will be in the single digits some time this year. You get the idea. So what’s going on , and what does that mean for Mozilla? And why did I choose now to make a switch personally?

Mozilla have decided to shake up the way they make payments with regard to bug squashing, in the statement they said “The bounty for valid potentially exploitable critical and high security rated client security vulnerabilities will be between $3000 and $7500 (USD) cash reward. The bounty program encourages the earliest possible reporting of these potentially exploitable bugs. A bounty may be paid for some moderate rated client security bugs at the discretion of the Bug Bounty Committee. If a bounty is paid for a moderate rated security issue, the amount will be between $500 and $2000 (US), depending on the severity of impact for the issue as determined by Bug Bounty Committee.”

SaaS/Big Data

From the very beginning ownCloud has had bigger ambitions then just being a file sync and share tool. This is apparent from the name ownCloud. Today, we have more than our documents and photos online. Our social networks and shared thoughts, our appointments and shopping lists, audio and video conversations all happen and are stored somehwere ‘in the cloud’, all connected. You can comment on a song you like for others to see or share an appointment with co workers. ownCloud means to give you a chance to bring all that back under your control!

Databases

While a number of factors are at play in Oracle’s stumbles, one of the most persistent is the rise of open-source databases, both relational and non-relational (NoSQL), as a recent Bloomberg article posits. As Powa Technologies CEO says, “They scale and operate extremely well, and they don’t cost anything.”

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

The Document Foundation published recently details about the immediate availability for download and testing of the third Beta release of the upcoming LibreOffice 5.0 open-source office suite for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

BSD

I’m going to talk today about signify, a tool I wrote for the OpenBSD project that cryptographically signs and verifies. This allows us to ensure that the releases we ship arrive on your computer in their original, intended form, without tampering.

This past February, Monowall announced the end of development as one of the most popular FreeBSD-based network/firewall focused distributions. For those still searching for a new replacement, Smallwall 1.8.2 has been released as the successor to Monowall 1.8.1.

While the uses for additive manufacturing at home seem to be increasing on a seemingly daily basis, there are still some items in the home that haven’t been able to be created due to the lack of suitable technologies. Among others is the ability to fabricate soft objects using digital fabrication tools.

Open Data

The United Nations has proactively researched and promoted open government data across the globe for close to five years now. The Open Data Institute maintains that open data can help “unlock supply, generate demand, and create and disseminate knowledge to address local and global issues.” McKinsey & Company report that “seven sectors alone could generate more than $3 trillion a year in additional value as a result of open data.”

There is no doubt that open data is an important public policy area—one that is here to stay. Yet, for all the grand promises, scratch beneath the surface and one finds a remarkable paucity of hard empirical facts about what is and isn’t happening on the ground—in the real world of cities where most of us increasingly live and work.

The Dutch government has prepared a new Trade Register Law that will effectively forbid free re-use of the register data of its Chamber of Commerce (Kamer van Koophandel, KvK). In response to an internet consultation, Stefan de Konink, open data proponent and founder of the OpenGeo Foundation, wrote an open letter to the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Security and Justice, asking the Dutch government to reconsider its new policy.

Programming

Folks in the Big Data and Hadoop communities are becoming increasingly interested in Apache Spark, an open source data analytics cluster computing framework originally developed in the AMPLab at UC Berkeley. We’ve covered Spark before, including the momentum surrounding it and backing for it from players like Cloudera.

Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo is to step down after coming under pressure following lacklustre results.

Mr Costolo will remain on the social network’s board after the move on July 1, the company said on Thursday night.

Twitter’s shares jumped 7.8pc in after-hours trading following the announcement, after closing flat at $35.84 during the day.

Mr Costolo will be replaced in the interim by co-founder Jack Dorsey, chairman of Twitter and chief executive of Square, the mobile payments company he founded in 2009. He will also continue in both those roles.

Health/Nutrition

After a study of GMOs over a four-year plus period, India’s multi-party Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture recommended a ban on GM food crops stating they had no role in a country of small farmers. The Supreme Court appointed a technical expert committee (TEC), which recommended an indefinite moratorium on the field trials of GM crops until the government devised a proper regulatory and safety mechanism. As yet, no such mechanism exists, but open field trials are being given the go ahead. GMO crops approved for field trials include rice, maize, chickpea, sugarcane, and brinjal.

Security

UK domain registry Nominet has shown off a striking new visualisation tool called ‘turing’ that large organisations can use to peer into their DNS traffic to trace latency issues and spot previously invisible botnets and malware.

Moscow-based antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab, famous for uncovering state-sponsored cyberattacks, today dropped its biggest bombshell yet: Its own computer networks were hit by state-sponsored hackers, probably working for Israeli intelligence or the U.S. National Security Agency. The same malware also attacked hotels that hosted ongoing top-level negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

Last week, the human resources arm of the US government, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) admitted that it had been victim of a massive data breach, where hackers stole personal data belonging to as many as 4 million government workers.

We already described how the recent hack into the US federal government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) appears to be much more serious than was initially reported. The hack, likely by Chinese state hackers, appear to have obtained basically detailed personal info on all current and many former federal government employees.

China-linked hackers appear to have gained access to sensitive background information submitted by US intelligence and military personnel for security clearances that could potentially expose them to blackmail, the Associated Press reported on Friday.

In a report citing several US officials, the news agency said that data on nearly all of the millions of US security-clearance holders, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA) and military special operations personnel, were potentially exposed in the attack on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

A second data breach at the US Office of Personnel Management has compromised even more sensitive information about government employees than the first breach that was revealed earlier this week, sources claim. It’s possible at least 14 million Americans have chapter and verse on their lives leaked, we’re told.

The Associated Press reports that hackers with close ties to China are believed to have obtained extensive background information on intelligence-linked government staffers – from CIA agents and NSA spies to military special ops – who have applied for security clearances.

Among the records believed to have leaked from a compromised database are copies of Standard Form 86 [PDF], a questionnaire that is given to anyone who applies for a national security position, and is typically verified via interviews and background checks.

Earlier this week, we noted that Senator Mitch McConnell, hot off of his huge flop in trying to preserve the NSA’s surveillance powers, had promised to insert the dangerous “cybersecurity” bill CISA directly into the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act). As we discussed, while many have long suspected that CISA (and CISPA before it) were surveillance bills draped in “cybersecurity” clothing, the recent Snowden revelations that the NSA is using Section 702 “upstream” collection for “cybersecurity” issues revealed how CISA would massively expand the NSA’s ability to warrantlessly wiretap Americans’ communications.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Google chairman Eric Schmidt on Tuesday afternoon, he boasted about Israel’s “robust hi-tech and cyber industries.” According to The Jerusalem Post, “Netanyahu also noted that ‘Israel was making great efforts to diversify the markets with which it is trading in the technological field.’”

Just how diversified and developed Israeli hi-tech innovation has become was revealed the very next morning, when the Russian cyber-security firm Kaspersky Labs, which claims more than 400 million users internationally, announced that sophisticated spyware with the hallmarks of Israeli origin (although no country was explicitly identified) had targeted three European hotels that had been venues for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, one of the first news sources to break the story, reported that Kaspersky itself had been hacked by malware whose code was remarkably similar to that of a virus attributed to Israel. Code-named “Duqu” because it used the letters DQ in the names of the files it created, the malware had first been detected in 2011. On Thursday, Symantec, another cyber-security firm, announced it too had discovered Duqu 2 on its global network, striking undisclosed telecommunication sites in Europe, North Africa, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia. It said that Duqu 2 is much more difficult to detect that its predecessor because it lives exclusively in the memory of the computers it infects, rather than writing files to a drive or disk.

Out of ulterior motives, some US media and politicians have developed a habit of scapegoating China for any alleged cyber attack on the United States. Such groundless accusations would surely harm mutual trust between the two big powers of today’s world.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

In a column headlined “The most interesting presidential candidate you’re not paying any attention to,” Cillizza bemoans the fact that “Graham is an asterisk—or close to it—in polling in every early state (except for his home state of South Carolina) and nationally.” Graham, he writes, is “generally regarded as a cause candidate, with that cause being to represent the most hawkish views on foreign policy and national security against attacks by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.”

Jeb Bush, kicking off a six-day European tour, will pay tribute on Tuesday to America’s alliance with Western Europe, calling it “as relevant as the day it was founded” and arguing that our long-time allies want a more engaged United States.

Only here in Germany, that is not exactly so.

Germans are conflicted about the Bush brand. While Jeb’s father is still lionized for helping to unify the country after the Cold War, his brother remains tremendously unpopular due to the Iraq War, viewed by most here as a singly American disaster.

But more than that, Germany is increasingly indifferent to the United States as a whole; uncertain whether these two world powers have much in common any more or even still really need one another.

Relations between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been increasingly chilly, with Netanyahu appearing in March before Congress in Washington D.C. to denounce U.S. negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

In some places, notably Ohio and Oklahoma, the injection of used fracking fluid in deep disposal wells appears to have produced a significant uptick in earthquake activity. The earthquakes are mostly much too small to be felt at the surface, but a magnitude 5.6 quake in Oklahoma was large enough to cause some damage in 2011.

This has made lots of news because of its scale, but it’s not our first experience with injection-triggered earthquakes. It’s a concern for geothermal power designs that inject water to depths where it can turn to turbine-driving steam, for example. And in the future, it could be a concern for efforts to store carbon dioxide in underground reservoirs.

Finance

The political battle over the enormous, twelve-nation trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership keeps getting stranger. President Obama has made the completion of the deal the number-one legislative priority of his second term. Indeed, Republican opponents of the T.P.P., in an effort to rally the red-state troops, have begun calling it Obamatrade. And yet most of the plan’s opponents are not Republicans; they’re Democrats.

Obama’s chief allies in his vote-by-vote fight in the House of Representatives to win “fast-track authority” to negotiate this and other trade deals are Speaker John Boehner and Representative Paul Ryan—not his usual foxhole companions. The vote may come as soon as Friday. The House Republican leaders tell their dubious members that they are supporting Obama only in order to “constrain” him. Meanwhile, Obama is lobbying members of the Black Congressional Caucus, whose support he can normally count on, tirelessly and, for the most part, fruitlessly. “The president’s done everything except let me fly Air Force One,” Representative Cedric Richmond, Democrat of Louisiana, told the Christian Science Monitor this week. Nonetheless, Richmond said, “I’m leaning no.”

On Wednesday, a few pages from the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement were published by Wikileaks and reported on by the New York Times. They seemed to indicate changes that go against the wishes of the pharmaceutical industry, eliminating language that sought to guarantee drug companies “competitive market-derived prices” when they sell overseas.

But the pharmaceutical industry has been lobbying lawmakers on the TPP since the beginning, and shaping far more than this one section of the agreement, according to Lee Drutman, senior fellow at the New America foundation and author of “The Business of America Is Lobbying.”

The scale of Tony Blair’s globe-trotting is exposed for the first time in secret documents that suggest the taxpayer is paying up to £16,000 a week to help the former prime minister build his business empire.

Documents seen by The Telegraph contain details of Mr Blair’s travels around the world, accompanied by a squad of police bodyguards, flying on private jets and staying in five-star hotels.

The files suggest Mr Blair has used identical trips to carry out both private business meetings and talks in his capacity as Quartet Representative to the Middle East – leaving him open to accusations of a potential conflict of interest.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

In announcing that his sons James and Lachlan will be largely taking control of his sprawling media company, press baron Rupert Murdoch did what observers always knew he wanted to do: pass on to his children the worldwide conglomerate that he’s built over the last five decades. In the United Sates, of course, that means handing over to his sons one of most important and influential voices in right-wing media and far-right politics, Fox News.

Google has failed in its efforts to overturn a worldwide site-blocking order handed down by a Canadian court in 2014. The British Columbia Court of Appeal found that despite not being a party to the case, Google must block a range of websites from its worldwide search results due to its business presence in the country.

In recent months copyright lobby groups have pressured the domain name system oversight body ICANN to take action against pirate sites. The organization is not happy with these calls and wants them to stop, making it crystal clear that they are not the Internet’s piracy police.

In the good old days those who wanted to restrict freedom of expression, whether they were campus Trots, neo-feminists or Christian conservatives a la Mary Whitehouse, used to wear their hearts on their sleeves. They proudly proclaimed their inherent authoritarianism, and articulated clear reasons as to why they wanted to limit the range of ideas and images circulating in society.

Ever since the early silent films in the late 19th century, Egyptians have grown a special fondness for films and cinema. By the time national television was created in the 1960s, Egypt was already a notable nation on the international artistic map.

Clay was charged with disorderly conduct after he was arrested at a Feb. 3 board meeting. Clay was at the meeting to voice his concerns that board members were holding workshops at odd hours, something he believed violated the state’s right-to-know law.

Two of the biggest names in the venture capital world announced today that they’re getting behind a libertarian-themed tech project—a vote of confidence for an experimental enterprise that aims to facilitate free and “censorship resistant” trade.

Universities should be places where discoveries are made, not where debate and free thought is shut down. Editor Rachael Jolley explains why the latest Index on Censorship magazine is focusing on academic freedom, with a look at current threats from around the worldwide, from Ukraine to the US

Russia’s media watchdog has written to Google, Twitter and Facebook warning them against violating Russian Internet laws and a spokesman said on May 21 they risk being blocked if they do not comply with the rules.

The Film and Publications Board’s (FPB) Draft Online Regulation Policy has been called “Africa’s worst new Internet censorship law”. Condemnation for the policy has been swift, damning, and widespread, and an online petition against the policy quickly gathered thousands of signatures. Many decry the policy as an attempt to censor the Internet in South Africa.

On Wednesday, the online forum announced that it has banned five of its online groups, also known as subreddits, which are dedicated to ridiculing gays, the obese, and blacks, among others. The move is the website’s first attempt to crack down on abuse on its pages.

After a photograph of the display had surfaced on social media, a backlash ensued — primarily from members of local law enforcement agencies and Police Benevolent Association Local 122 — who condemned the piece, believing it portrayed law enforcement in a negative light.

YouTube videos of police in dubious action have had their effects this week.

First, the South Carolina police officer who in April shot an unarmed black man, Walter Scott, in the back was indicted on a murder charge by a grand jury on Monday. (The incident was filmed and posted to YouTube by a bystander.)

This week has also witnessed the aftermath of a YouTube video of a private pool party last weekend in McKinney, Texas, in which an officer acted with severe, seemingly uwarranted aggression toward a teenage black girl. The incident is under investigation and the officer, Cpl. Eric Casebolt, resigned and apologized.

It’s clear that there’s a massive culture divide between the circus performers/weight trainers/yoga instructors/freedivers who champion this treatment of babies and, well, pretty much everybody west of Moscow.

Facebook initially refused to take down the Indonesian video of baby dunking, saying that the video didn’t break its rules and that taking it down would also mean that the site would have to ban videos of brutality during the Arab spring or those depicting animal cruelty.

The interview took place just 48 hours before Clint Eastwood found himself in hot water over an apparently insensitive joke. The veteran star was speaking on stage at the 2015 Spike TV Guys Choice awards, and made an offhand comment about Caitlyn Jenner when discussing athletes-turned-actors.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (a US Federal agency) earlier this month signed a $2,291,666 contract with the maker of Ultrasurf, touted as “one of the world’s most popular anti-censorship, pro-privacy” computer programs.

Ultrareach Internet Corp., based in Cheyenne, Wyo., created Ultrasurf to help Internet users in China defeat censorship and surf the Web anonymously.

Privacy

German Chancellor Angela Merkel continues to be attacked by Social Democratic leaders. Ralph Stegner, a vice-chairman of the Social Democrats who already attacked Merkel a few days ago for her anti-Russia policy, attacked her also on the NSA issue, charging her with stonewalling the parliamentary investigation committee by refusing to release data on who the phone-tapping targets were in industry and political institutions.

German Bundestag President Norbert Lammert has criticized a government proposal to appoint its own external investigating officers with access to NSA search terms. He wants both government and opposition to have a say.

President Obama sought to smooth over tensions with a crucial ally, bonding on Sunday with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany over beer, sausages and their shared determination to confront Russia over its aggression in Ukraine, as he declared her a “great friend and partner” during a summit meeting of world leaders.

Greeting Ms. Merkel with an embrace and kisses on both cheeks near Krün’s picturesque town square at the foot of the Alps, Mr. Obama emphasized the ties that connect Germans and Americans despite a troubled history.

According to a new report published by The New York Times and ProPublica on Thursday, starting in 2012 the NSA and the FBI launched a secret campaign against foreign hackers that involved surveillance of Americans’ personal data.

The report notes that the agencies acquired vast amounts of Americans’ internet search data as they monitored the information that hackers were processing.

The catalyst for Congress’ historic vote on NSA reform on Tuesday – the same person who led to a federal court to rule that NSA mass surveillance of Americans was illegal – remains exiled from the United States and faces decades in jail. The crime he’s accused of? Telling the American public the very truth that forced Congress to restrict, rather than expand, the spy agency’s power for the first time in over forty years.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Senate passed the U.S.A. Freedom Act, voting 67-32 and rejecting four eleventh-hour amendments. President Obama is expected to sign the bill Tuesday night, which means that the government’s metadata program will continue, but on modified terms. Custody of the metadata itself will transition from the N.S.A. to the phone companies. The government will still have some access, limited to specific queries of “a person, entity, account, address, or device,” and most incoming records will be stored for less than eighteen months, not five years or more. On the whole, the bill is a Goldilocks answer to larger questions about security versus liberty. The specific trade-offs will continue to be made by the secret FISA court, but with far more scrutiny and a stricter set of rules.

CTB Locker ransomware attacks rose 165 per cent in the first three months of 2015.

More than a third (35 per cent) of victims were based in Europe, McAfee Labs reported. CTB Locker encrypts files and holds them hostage until the ransom is paid. As such, the crimeware is picking up the baton that dropped with the takedown of the infamous CryptoLocker ransomware scam in May last year.

The latest edition of Intel Security’s report, released on Tuesday, reports attacks on firmware for the first time. More specifically, the report details “persistent and virtually undetectable attacks” by the so-called Equation Group that reprogram hard disk drives and solid state drive firmware.

Legislation by must-pass appropriations bill rider continued Thursday with an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill that would block funding of any government program to build or encourage cybersecurity back doors.

The House passed legislation Thursday that would prevent the NSA from spying on American citizens whose data was incidentally collected during foreign dragnets, marking the second year in a row that the lower chamber has put the kibosh on backdoor domestic spying.

Last night, we noted that an amendment from Reps. Thomas Massie and Zoe Lofgren was on the docket that had two provisions to stop two different kinds of surveillance: the first, taking away funding from “backdoor searches” which are a hugely problematic “loophole” that the NSA uses to do warrantless surveillance of Americans. In many ways, this is much worse than the bulk collection programs that were just hindered by the USA Freedom Act. The second part of the amendment was barring funds from being used to mandate “backdoors” into technology products — another hugely important move. Thankfully, the amendment passed by a wide margin earlier today: 255 – to 174.

Over 17 years, David Darchicourt worked with the National Security Agency as a graphic designer and art director, illustrating top-secret documents about government surveillance programs. Now he is the unwitting central character in a new exhibition that puts the spotlight on the spy agency’s imagery.

Inside the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, a cavernous Renaissance library in Venice’s St. Mark’s Square, some of Darchicourt’s designs for the NSA have been placed on display among historic 16th-century pieces by famed Italian painters like Veronese and Titian.

A 32-year-old New Zealand artist has tapped the art work of a 17-year-veteran of the National Security Agency to create an exhibit in Italy that focuses on the spy agency’s imagery used in secret documents.

Only a week after Congress passed reforms to the Patriot Act ending the National Security Agency’s metadata phone collection program, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, with the help of big business allies, is moving to expand domestic surveillance of a different type.

The National Security Agency (NSA) may not just be listening to your phone calls. It may also be keeping transcripts of your private phone conversations.

Top-secret documents from the archive of Edward Snowden, NSA’s controversial former contractor, revealed that the spy agency has the capability to automatically recognize the contents within phone calls.

About an hour after the White House said President Barack Obama had signed legislation ending the National Security Agency’s bulk telephone collection program, the Justice Department told a secret court that the controversial spy program Edward Snowden disclosed could continue under the law.

The passage of the USA Freedom Act is the first major effort by Congress to rein in parts of the Patriot Act and the NSA’s bulk data collection program. But the law may never have been passed had it not been for Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who leaked information about that agency’s broad surveillance powers.

Despite a ruling by the Second U.S. Court of Appeals that the National Security Agency’s collection of data derived from the private telephone communications of Americans exceeded statutory provisions of the “Patriot Act,” the Obama administration is asking the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (better known as the FISA Court) to simply ignore the decision of the three-judge panel. In fact, the British paper The Guardian said that the Obama administration does not even consider the decision of the circuit court “the last word” on the matter.

Recent debates over US government spying have focused on one specific program: the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records — and the Patriot Act provision that supplied the program’s legal justification. From that perspective, the partial expiration of the Patriot Act a week ago and the subsequent passage of surveillance reform legislation might seem like a decisive victory against mass surveillance.

Rhizome, the non-profit organisation affiliated with the New Museum has bought together two of the world’s most famous dissidents for a single art project. Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, who is still unable to leave his home country since 2011, has joined forces with Jacob Applebaum, a computer security researcher and hacker who has worked closely with Wikileaks.

The site was reportedly not secured with HTTPS, a basic encryption method, and hackers were able to take control, displaying taunting messages that read, “You’ve been hacked” and “Your commanders admit they are training the people they have sent you to die fighting,” on the site’s main page.

On June 1, key provisions of the Patriot Act expired. That bill was used to justify the NSA’s collection of metadata, and many panicked that as surveillance went dark, terrorism would flourish. But in the few days the agency was forced to stop spying, the sky didn’t fall, and according to Daniel Castro, that’s proof that it should end altogether.

Senators have a historic opportunity to uphold, or resuscitate, the basic American belief that liberty cannot survive when government flouts its limits. On Sunday, those who represent us must either vote for Big Brother or vote for the Bill of Rights. They can’t have it both ways.

Over-classification of U.S. government information is a grave threat to the Republic, giving politicians and bureaucrats the power to hide facts that aren’t really sensitive but are vital to a meaningful public debate, such as the IG report on President Bush’s surveillance program, says ex-NSA analyst Kirk Wiebe.

UK charity Privacy International has filed the claim, arguing that GCHQ should end the bulk collection of data, which recently became illegal in the US with the passing of last week’s Freedom Act.

A similar programme of bulk data collection by the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US was revealed to the public by whiste-blower Edward Snowden in 2013.

The organisation claims that it has made the first UK legal challenge to bulk data collection, and notes that “the equivalent NSA power has now been curtailed before the debate this side of the pond has even begun”.

Although it would be naive to think that the tide is turning, it’s heartening to see a few wins against government attempts to formalise and extend surveillance of their populations. The passage of the USA Freedom Act, however flawed and limited it may be, is one example. The various rulings against the UK government are another. While rightly celebrating these, it’s easy to overlook other battles being fought elsewhere, perhaps not so high profile, but just as important.

Less than two weeks after Congress was forced into passing historic NSA reform, the Senate tried Thursday to sneak a dangerous “cybersecurity” proposal, which would exponentially expand the spy agency’s power to gather data on Americans, into a massive defense-spending bill. The amendment thankfully failed, but it will be back – possibly within days – and it may require a huge grassroots effort to stop its passage.

Two executive branch review panels have found the call record program is not essential to preventing terror attacks. The administration has publicly identified no example of a plot it exclusively unveiled.

Skynet, the fictional cybernetic warfare system with its own independent Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven central computing core, is real. Leaked NSA documents highlight the capability of the system to pinpoint and locate high-value targets in real time and then continuously monitor them, as well.

“I was, actually, personally, me and my family, were targeted by defense contractors who were contracted by the US Chamber of Commerce,” BradCast host Brad Friedman says, adding that he only found out through the hacktivist group Anonymous.

Experience has shown that Americans cannot count on intelligence agencies to be judicious, or the Obama administration to be forthcoming, so lawmakers should create tighter rules that ensure that intelligence programs have the robust privacy and civil liberty safeguards that the law and the Constitution require.

Belgium will react strongly if allegations that German intelligence agencies spied on the country’s companies and government bodies at the request of the US National Security Service (NSA) are confirmed, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said Tuesday.

3. It was never just about phone records. When an appeals court last month ruled that Section 215 was unlawful, it also pointed out that the issue at stake wasn’t only the government’s right to gather up phone records of innocent Americans and keep them for years on end.

“If the government (argument) is correct,” the court wrote, ” it could use 215 to collect and store in bulk any other existing metadata available anywhere in the private sector, including …financial records, medical records, and electronic communications (including e‐mail and social media information) relating to all Americans.”

A crucial moment in the debate this past month over the National Security Agency’s access to Americans’ phone records in terrorism investigations came on May 20, two days before Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to squelch House legislation that would restrict that access.

USA Today has published an editorial by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in which he uses fear, innuendo and legal jargon to argue more privacy cannot keep Americans safe from terrorism. The editorial rationalizes the increased reliance on warrantless surveillance by the United States government. It is especially stunning, given the fact that Gonzales lied to Congress about the warrantless wiretapping program in 2006.

Gonzales was asked on February 6, 2006, whether James Comey, who is now the FBI director, and others at the Justice Department, had expressed concerns about NSA warrantless wiretapping. He claimed in testimony their concerns were related to another program and not the wiretapping program.

With the recent passage of the USA Freedom Act last week, experts at local colleges said that while some of the new guidelines curbing government surveillance are a step in the right direction, the law may fall short of protecting civil liberties.

In the congressional debate over reforming the National Security Agency’s dragnet surveillance of American’s phone communications, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s political miscalculations allowed three controversial provisions under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act to expire on June 1. However, the law was reinstated the next day when the Senate passed the USA Freedom Act, which the House had approved earlier. President Obama, who supported the bill, signed the USA Freedom Act into law that same day.

Two of the top trade associations for major technology companies such as Google and IBM voiced their strident opposition to any policy proposal that would weaken encryption systems for the benefit of law enforcement.

The letter was sent to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, FBI director James Comey (who was an early entrant in the current round of governmental protest over encryption), Attorney General Loretta Lynch (whose outgoing predecessor established the AG’s stand on the issue) and other heads of cabinet.

At the start of last month, Google and Stanford University researchers released a report on a largely legal yet dubious practice in the advertising industry. It’s called ad injection.

The process effectively intercepts users’ traffic to inject content, namely, those irritating adverts and popups that seem to come from nowhere. Media rightly jumped on the report, highlighting the companies named as the top ad injectors. What went unnoticed, until now, is that most of the searchable organisations involved in this potentially dangerous business are based in Israel. They also happen to have links to the nation’s military and its top signals intelligence agency, the Israeli equivalent of the NSA or GCHQ: Unit 8200, which works out of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Ben Wizner, Snowden’s lead lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, declined to discuss possible negotiations with the Obama administration, but appeared less pessimistic about Snowden’s future.

Tucked into the surveillance bill that became law was a little-noticed section that will let the United States complete ratification of two long-stalled treaties aimed at stopping a frightening scenario: terrorists wielding radioactive bombs.

When the USA Freedom Act was passed last week, it was hailed as the first major limit on NSA surveillance powers in decades. Less talked about was the law’s mandate to open a secret intelligence court to unprecedented scrutiny.

[...]

But while the USA Freedom Act calls for important FISA court rulings will be made public, there’s no guarantee they will be. For one, final say on declassification still rests with the executive branch rather than the judges themselves.

Legislation ending the US government’s bulk collection of telephone data is “a historic victory for the rights of every citizen,” former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden said in a commentary on June 4.

In the opinion piece, published in several newspapers internationally including The New York Times, Snowden reflected on what he said was a profound shift in the public’s awareness of mass surveillance since his infamous leaks disclosing the extent to which the US government and some partners monitor electronic communications.

Ellsberg’s case ended in a mistrial because of government misconduct. But there is no reason to believe Snowden’s trial would end the same way. Even though the case against him would be weak, there is good reason to doubt he would be acquitted.

Lincoln Chafee launched his uphill bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination with a perfect illustration of why it is vitally important that the race for the Democratic nomination for the presidency feature robust debates on issues such as mass surveillance.

The US has recently taken steps to cut back on its surveillance programmes. In the UK, the government has just received the green light to continue.

The UK can continue to collect bulk data on overseas communications and can access bulk data held by telephone companies and internet service providers on UK citizens.

An investigation by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorist Legislation into the effectiveness of surveillance legislation has concluded that the UK government does need to access bulk communications data in the interests of national security.

Cisco’s outgoing CEO John Chambers has said that “rules of the road” need to be set for governments seeking to undertake surveillance operations while working with technology companies, as he rejected suggestions that the company’s reputation has taken a hit globally.

Let’s talk about something happier. What’s been your proudest day as a lawyer so far?

A pretty happy day was when we finished the 9/11 commission report and released it publicly. It was a tremendous feeling of satisfaction. It was so bipartisan…and fulfilled both a psychological and policy need for the country.

What drew you to work for the 9/11 commission?

Until then, I’d been clerking or doing appellate work at a law firm. While I love that work, the thing I didn’t like about it is sometimes it could feel too academic or removed from the real world. The idea of helping on a staff…of people who wanted to investigate what went wrong before 9/11 felt very relevant and in the moment.

It is similar on the Internet. The American Constitution doesn’t allow mass surveillance of its citizens. Therefore, there is no question that the NSA – without a court order – would knowingly and on a massive scale read the e-mails of Americans.

If privacy rights weren’t reason enough to curb the NSA’s surveillance program, the economic implications of the program may offer an even more compelling argument. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a Washington DC-based think tank, the NSA’s programs is hitting the country where it really hurts — its collective pocketbook, by costing U.S. tech companies up to $35 billion in foreign business by 2016. This may be the most persuasive ammunition to date for critics of the NSA’s programs.

Last week, the U.S. Congress passed the first major revisions to the National Security Agency’s surveillance capabilities since revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden brought its domestic data-gathering operations to light in June 2013. Snowden, who has been indicted for leaking the classified information, quickly took to the opinion pages of The New York Times for a victory lap.

One week after Congress voted to stop the National Security Agency from collecting and storing millions of Americans’ phone records, partisans on both sides are exaggerating the significance of this new reform. NSA supporters lament the loss of a key tool for fighting terrorists, while the agency’s critics hail the new law as (in Edward Snowden’s words) an “historic victory for the rights of every citizen,” with some calling its passage a vindication of Snowden himself as an authentic whistleblower who should be let back home as a hero, not a convict.

In the years since Snowden’s historic act of civil disobedience, the politics of surveillance have evolved. For much of the early 2000s, politicians of both parties competed to show who could be a bigger booster of the National Security Agency’s operations, fearing that any focus on civil liberties might make them look soft on terrorism. Since Snowden, though, the political paradigm has shifted.

Two years ago this month, a 29-year-old government contractor named Edward Snowden became the Daniel Ellsberg of his generation, delivering to journalists a tranche of secret documents shedding light on the government’s national security apparatus. But whereas Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers detailing one specific military conflict in Southeast Asia, Snowden released details of the U.S. government’s sprawling surveillance machine that operates around the globe.

On June 2 as President Barack Obama signed the USA Freedom Act into law, curtailing domestic surveillance, The Associated Press reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been using a fleet of low-flying aircraft over U.S. cities for video and cellphone surveillance. And on June 4 The New York Times reported that the Obama administration secretly expanded the National Security Agency’s role in warrantless domestic cybersurveillance in 2012.

This denial of the truth and claim of victimhood extends to the accusation of anti-Semitism trumpeted at every critic, including this one, despite the fact that I have the highest respect for the immense cultural and scientific achievements of the Jewish people. Israel is a different question entirely.

It is this absolute divorce of propaganda from reality that makes Tony Blair an ideal figurehead. Blair has now become head of a Council of Europe (loosely) linked body which claims to exist to promote tolerance, but in fact exists entirely to promote extreme Islamophobia and to shut down criticism of Israel. And it is a further sign of the estrangement from reality of the influential Israelis behind Blair’s appointment that they believe Tony Blair will influence public opinion positively in their favour. A remarkable example of confirmation bias.

For years, just being a young African-American or Hispanic male in New York meant getting stopped randomly. Most of the people stopped not only had committed no crime to justify the stop, but, once frisked, had no contraband, weapons, drugs, etc. A few fish may have been caught in this over-inclusive net, but (to extend the metaphor), of the ones thrown back, how many were affected by the intrusion? My guess — all of them.

Getting stopped by police for no reason hurts. Not only your time, but your sense of security. Bad feelings well up, suspiciousness of cops, a sense of insecurity when you walk down the street, a feeling that anything can happen at any time by the people posted there to protect you.

Yesterday I ran an interview with the Florida mom whose children were removed from their home for a month after a neighbor reported the family to Child Protective Services because their 11-year-old son was left outside by himself for 90 minutes.

The right to be drunk on the front porch of a private home was endorsed Friday by the Iowa Supreme Court, which said a woman can’t be convicted of public intoxication while standing on her front steps.

Patience Paye, 29, of Waterloo based the appeal of her 2013 case on the contention that her front steps are not a public place so she can’t be charged with public intoxication.

I am delighted that a judge yesterday ruled that the Fast Track asylum appeals system is illegal. It is the most appalling abuse, specifically designed to limit the capacity of individuals in life threatening circumstances to properly develop and present their legal case and put it before a judge. The system of putting law-abiding people, often families, into detention harsher than our harshest maximum security prisons, allowed just one hour a day out of a tiny cell for exercise, is a minor inconvenience compared to the fundamental denial of proper right to justice. The recent unjust deportation of Majid Ali was just the latest of a series of fast track cases I have encountered. Nadira has finished the script of a short film about a tragic couple, based on substantial research of true stories of fast track detention, and is developing the production.

Internet/Net Neutrality

In the months since the Federal Communications Commission voted to regulate the Internet like a public utility, opponents of the new rules have clamored to keep them from taking effect this Friday.

On Thursday, those opponents were disappointed as a federal judge denied their requests to stay the rules while litigation proceeds against them. The court did grant an expedited hearing of the case, meaning it could be argued as soon as the fall or early winter.

The FCC’s Net neutrality rules are slated to go into effect today, but the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday launched a sneak attack that could strip the agency of its ability to actually enforce the regulations that protect an open Internet.

The rules approved by the FCC in February and published to the Federal Register in April reclassify broadband as a utility under Title II of the Communications Act and prohibit ISPs from throttling content or implementing paid prioritization schemes that would create Internet fast lanes.

Facebook is about to get a much better idea of what you do and don’t like in your News Feed — even if you don’t click the like button. The company is about to start measuring how long you look posts, photos, and comments in your feed. The thinking is, if you linger on a status update and read a couple of comments, you probably are interested in that content. And if you’re interested in that update, your friends would probably like to see it as well.